Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Amendment (Dairy Cattle Export Charge) Bill 2020, and I move the amendment as circulated in my name:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1)notes the Government's commitment to a $100 billion agriculture industry; and

(2)condemns the Government for its failure to develop a comprehensive plan to achieve the National Farmers' Federation's vision for agriculture to be a $100 billion industry by 2030".

This is a fairly straightforward bill and the opposition will be supporting it. It imposes a compulsory $6 per head levy on the export of live dairy cattle. It is a levy which currently exists, although it has been suspended. The industry has asked that it be made mandatory. That's basically the issue under debate this evening.

We are told the money will be used to extend marketing and research and development in this area of industry, including, very importantly, the dairy cattle export program, which helps farmers in underdeveloped countries, in particular, build the infrastructure, the skills and the animal welfare architecture they need to make their enterprises a viable proposition. Most Australians, I suspect, would be surprised to learn that we send dairy cattle to these countries. They're quite familiar with the concept of live sheep, as controversial as that is, and live cattle exports for beef purposes and, therefore, in both cases, meat processing. But I think most would be surprised to know that we export live dairy cattle as well. There are two reasons we do so. The first is that it's an additional form of income for dairy farmers, who typically sell older heifers, and it's very helpful to them in difficult times such as drought. Something like 90,000 head went in the last calendar year, if I remember correctly, valued at about $200 million. So you can see that, for a dairy farmer, it's an opportunity to sell cattle, particularly in times of hardship. It's also no doubt a form of development assistance for countries still going through their development phase, enabling them to build their own herds and, therefore, self-sufficiency in dairy products. I think the industry would say it likes to consider it a win-win in that sense.

Having said that, I note that it's a curious bill in many ways. Where the initiative comes from to make the levy mandatory is a little bit unclear to me. We did hold a Senate inquiry and no real objections were raised on that basis. The opposition is willing to support the bill. Industry seems to favour the mandatory levy, although there was criticism from some dairy groups that insufficient consultation had been undertaken before the government brought this proposition to the House.

The other point to be made is that we know that back in 2011 the amount of money raised with the voluntary levy, as a proportion of the amount of money that would be raised by a compulsory levy now, was around 92 per cent. In other words, many dairy farmers were participating in the scheme and making it a voluntary contribution. By 2018 that had dropped to 14 per cent, and by 2019 to three per cent. You can see that those who are very keen to have the levy in place for marketing purposes et cetera want the levy to become mandatory, because dairy farmers have ceased to take up the voluntary opportunity. There could be two reasons for that: either they don't see the value in the contribution or, as numbers declined, they felt that very few were paying an amount of money that wasn't going to achieve anything anyway, because it's too small an amount of money to fund significant programs—a point that's been made by LiveCorp in respect of this bill. Having said that, I say that it's hardly a vote of confidence in the levy that so few dairy farmers were voluntarily making a contribution. It doesn't leave one with the impression that dairy farmers thought the contribution was a worthy one. But I will let the industry speak for itself in that sense. Certainly, as I said, farmers have been expressing concern that they haven't been properly consulted on the matter. Those things have been canvassed in the Senate report.

There are a number of other reasons that the bill is somewhat curious to me. The first is that it's a little bit of cart before the horse, from my perspective. The Labor Party made clear in the lead-up to the last election that, while we were very proud of the research and development architecture used in the agriculture sector, having established it around 30 years ago under then Minister John Kerin, it was a very old architecture that hadn't kept pace with rapidly changing times and one that, we believed, was very much in need of review. There was and is a need to look at that architecture and reconstruct it to ensure that farmers are getting maximum value from their levy contributions and that the industry is getting sufficient return on investment through R&D and extension programs.

Yet here we are introducing a new levy without looking at the architecture. The government spent $2.7 million with EY, not long before the election, asking it to look at the architecture of this R&D system. EY delivered a report and the government promised it would implement the recommendations of the report. It did so both pre-election and on many occasions post-election, particularly through former minister Senator McKenzie, it expressed a determination to pursue reform in this area, and yet nothing was done. So it is the cart before the horse: new levies without thinking about the system itself.

The second reason is that this is an animal welfare opportunity. We know that there is growing concern about animal welfare in the live export industry. Labor, when last in office, demonstrated that those concerns can be addressed through ESCAS, the auditing trail we put in place to ensure that cattle are treated well all the way from the port here to slaughter in places like Indonesia. That system has never picked up dairy cattle. I accept there are some good arguments for not picking up dairy cattle, because they don't go to slaughter in the importing country. So the question then is at what point you stop auditing them, because they may be with the farmer in a developing country for many years after they are imported. How do you extend the auditing trail without making it ad infinitum? It is a challenge, but I think we should be having a conversation about it. It's worthy of debate. Maybe there can be a point that determines when the supply chain auditing system comes to an end. I think the government lost an opportunity here to have that debate within the context of this bill, because I don't know how that debate comes forward otherwise, other than, God forbid, another incident in the live cattle trade, which none of us want. So it's a missed opportunity.

The third reason is that the proposition put forward in the bill fails to tell us how this new initiative fits into the government's overall strategy for the agriculture sector. How does it fit in with the government's plan? How big an issue is it within the government's plan? How important is it within the government's guidance? People need to understand that the government is not capable of telling us where it fits into its plan because it doesn't have a plan for the Australian agriculture sector. It says it matches or supports the National Farmers Federation's ambition to grow the farmgate value of the sector to $100 billion by 2030, as do we, but it doesn't have a plan to demonstrate how it's going to help the agriculture sector to arrive there. I've been saying for more than six years now that there is a lack of such a plan. We had a national food plan, just before we lost government. The member for New England has been pretty unkind about that national food plan, but I disagree with him; I think it was a quality plan. But it was a precursor, a building block, to something much larger. But since this government won office, in 2013, there has been no development of any plan. The member for New England might say that his 2015 white paper represented such a plan. I would beg to differ. I think that was a disappointing document. But, even if he were able to successfully argue that that was a plan, it does not change the fact that the government hasn't embraced his plan. The 2015 white paper has basically been shelved by the member for New England's own government, since then gathering dust, and nothing has been put in place to replace it.

Those listening to the debate don't have to take my word on that point. They only need to look at the words of the Prime Minister. Just over a year ago now, the Prime Minister attended the bush summit held in Dubbo, sponsored by The Daily Telegraph newspaper—a summit that, by coincidence, is being held again this coming weekend. I'll certainly be there making a contribution, as will the Prime Minister, I understand; the Leader of the Opposition; certainly, the energy minister; and maybe others. And I think it will be a worthy event. To my joy, and I'm sure to the joy of many in the agriculture sector, including those at the National Farmers Federation, the Prime Minister finally came good at the Dubbo Bush Summit. He talked about the National Farmers Federation's ambition to grow the industry to a $100 billion industry by 2030. On that day he charged Senator McKenzie, the then agriculture minister, with the job of developing the plan. With so many others, I said, 'Hallelujah!' After six or seven years the government had finally come to the conclusion that we needed an overarching plan for the agriculture sector, a plan which, among other things, offered guidance for investors and farmers about where the government believed the industry was heading and what it believed was the best course for achieving those ambitions—whether it be natural resource allocation, the challenge of drought or building resilience. It focused just as much on value in our product as on volume in commodity markets. I could talk about those things all night, but we needed a plan and I was delighted that the Prime Minister, after all that time, said we would have a plan.

Alas, here we are, more than 12 months on from the Bush Summit in Dubbo, and we've heard no more about the plan. Not only do we still not have a plan; we haven't even had any mention of a plan. It is extraordinary for the Prime Minister to stand at a public event like that—in front of so many farmers, in front of the media and in front of the Leader of the Opposition—and declare that he was now charging his agriculture minister with developing a plan and then to go 12 months without even mentioning the plan. I can hear others saying that we then had COVID come along. But COVID came along in substantial terms in about March this year, and the Prime Minister made this commitment in, I think, July last year. So it's a long time, and they've had a lot of opportunity to do something.

In the past, the government might have been able to argue that there was no need for an overarching strategic plan. I would say that that was a silly thing to argue, but I can see why a government, particularly this one, might try to argue that case. But the Prime Minister himself said in Dubbo that we needed such a plan and that we were going to have such a plan—and there still is no plan. So everything that comes before us in an almost ad hoc basis, like this bill tonight, is in a sense out of turn, because we really should be debating these things in the context of what we believe to be the pathway to our aspirations in agriculture and the path to tackling the many, many challenges we have in the agriculture sector.

I can't let this opportunity pass without talking about the government's Future Drought Fund. This was announced with great fanfare by the Prime Minister at yet another drought event. This time it was not the Bush Summit but the Drought Summit, which we had at Old Parliament House in latish 2018. Having announced the Drought Summit, again with great fanfare, the Prime Minister made an announcement about how he was going to fix the drought, prior to a word being spoken at Old Parliament House that day. He announced that he was going to have a $5 billion drought fund. This government loves the big-dollar headline but doesn't like the follow-through. It overreaches and then doesn't deliver. It talks about headline numbers but then spends little. Of course, there never was going to be a $5 billion drought fund—at least, not anytime soon. What the government did was rob $3.7 or $3.9 billion—I'm not sure which—out of the existing Building Australia Fund, a fund largely designed to finance road, rail and bridge infrastructure in the regions, and move it across to the drought fund. How did it get to $5 billion? It said that if it only takes $100 million out of it each year it will grow to $5 billion by, I think, 2027. There was never $5 billion and there still is no $5 billion, but there is $100 million to be drawn out every year. If the government said, 'We're going to spend $100 million every year on building this new drought resilience program,' then the Prime Minister wouldn't have received much of a headline, but $5 billion gave him a great headline.

Now we ask ourselves: where will the first $100 million be spent? I don't have time to go into it tonight but, suffice to say, as I predicted, industry is not very impressed with the government's intentions. We need a serious approach to future drought and resilience building, giving people the opportunity to diversify income. From what I've seen of where the government intends to spend that money, it's not going to deliver that coherent plan. That will be a great disappointment to many in the agriculture sector, including most of the leaders in the agriculture sector.

Talking about leaders, of course, just last week the National Farmers Federation committed itself to net zero emissions by 2050, making the list of organisations and companies, including those in the resources sector, a very, very long one indeed. If we are to be serious about the future of the agriculture sector, a more challenging climate and the difficulties that throws up for farmers, we again need to give investors guidance. I think all of us banding together, as have industry and farm leadership groups and every premier in the country, to agree on that target, that aspiration, would be a really good thing for investors in terms of investor certainty but it would be a very good thing for farmers as well. It could then act as guidance for some of those strategic plans I'm talking about in the agriculture sector.

Sadly, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. With so many companies and groups, including the BCA and others, signing up to zero net emissions, surely the government must be now starting to think: 'Well, we're trailing behind others here, and having that aspiration guiding our strategic plans makes common sense and would be a good thing for the agriculture sector.' The opposition, as I said, will be supporting the bill, and I look forward to the contribution of others.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded? The amendment is seconded.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You don't have to, I suppose, require some form of pseudoprofundity or Latinate mysticism to speak on a subject where we agree we need this levy. The Liberal party agrees we need this levy. The Labor Party agrees we need this levy and so does the industry. Therefore what is about to prevail is probably one of my most difficult 15 minutes, to basically prattle on about something that everybody is in roaring agreement about. What I would say is that the ESCAS system has provided a great capacity for the export market, and you can see in the export of cattle it's provided a great capacity for the tapping of further markets.

What I can say is that, back home on the dairy farm, the problems still abound, with people getting ripped off by processors who are being pressured by major retailers. It doesn't seem to stand up to the reality of what this House is supposed to do that we still have farmers, especially in Queensland, who are just being held over a barrel. If we keep going down the path of squeezing these people, we won't have a fresh milk market. It will start devolving from the top and make its way down. Once upon a time there was a heap of farmers on the Atherton Tablelands. Now there are maybe a couple. Once upon a time we had dairy farmers in Central Queensland. But the pressure just remains on them. If you have a desire for fresh milk, you've got to support the dairy farmers who produce it.

Obviously in the southern part of our nation, we have different climatic circumstances and we also have a different market—predominantly, a solids market. That means they turn the milk into milk solids and export that. But the fresh milk market of the north, which I would say is so vital for one of Australia's accepted standards of living—that you can go to the shop and get fresh milk, not reconstituted milk or long-life milk, but actually fresh milk—can only happen if you've got dairy farmers. I always feel sorry for them because their numbers get smaller and smaller and smaller each year. And each year that their numbers get smaller is a sign of policy failure from both sides of this chamber.

We always say that we're going to stand up to the major supermarkets, but we never do. We have consumer laws and we have market laws, but we never really want to step on their toes. We never go that far. They're a bit too big and too powerful for us to take them on. Then you hear of other issues where they go completely off the rails—and we heard tonight that the Business Council of Australia are supporting zero carbon emissions. Are they the ones who are going to reach into their pockets and help the people out when they lose their jobs? We've successfully managed to send our whole manufacturing overseas—that was a clever trick! And now we continue on in a precarious world where we're being tested by things such as COVID-19 as to what our resilience is if borders shut down. Yet a policy such as net zero carbon emissions gets put forward and we say we're going to reinstitute a manufacturing industry. It's like saying that we're going to drive our car on square wheels. It's just not going to work. And, if it is going to work, then where is it going to work? How are you going to do it? Are you going to start subsidising manufacturing again? How on earth does that actually stack up?

I also heard about the NFF, from the member for Hunter. He's got dairy farmers in his electorate—there's no doubt about that—that don't believe in zero net carbon emissions. I say to the NFF: be really careful what you wish for, because one of the super greenhouse gases is methane. Guess where methane is prominent? It's in bovine ruminants. What's one of the big areas where you get methane? It's in dairy farms. So how can you say that, and how can you get yourself on the sticky paper on subjects such as this? Be careful—we know how this works.

In everything that we do, I believe there is a challenge between socialism and private enterprise. Socialism ultimately wants to have greater control over private assets, such as land tenure and title, and also income stream. We've seen this—and I say this to the NFF—with the tree-clearing legislation that came in. It basically divested the landholder of their title to something that they formerly owned and vested it in the state via state governments—so they didn't have to pay compensation—without payment. That means it was divested from a private individual and vested in the state, just like they did over a number of years with the hydrocarbon materials that resided under the soil which were initially part of the title as well. This is all part of the creeping socialism. The next stage, of course, is to impose on the income stream. What better way to impose on the income stream than with a carbon tax? To think that everything you do and the more industrious you are, the more the government taxes you!

We're going to have a carbon trading scheme. Of course, in having a carbon trading scheme, you'll end up with a methane trading scheme. What we'll have is farmers with a licence to expel into the atmosphere a certain amount of methane, beyond which they'll have to buy permits from somebody else—and this in an industry such as dairy, which is doing it so tough. It would be the final nail in the coffin to try and put yet another cost on top of them. Of course, all the noble people will come out and explain to them the ways they could get round it, deal with it or manage the government tax.

Another problem we've got here is that, while—I think—Nola Marino is a dairy farmer, I don't think there are any others in the whole building. Maybe I'm wrong. In fact, to be quite frank, these days you can't find an awful lot of farmers, or people who are actually on the land, in this building. So the problem we have with policy coming forward from here is that it's predominantly driven by a construct of the policy desires of an urban constituency which are ultimately then foisted on a rural constituency. Things such as zero carbon emissions don't really affect a white-collar workforce in inner suburban areas. They don't really make an awful lot of difference in the short term. In the long term, as you put more and more pressure on your real income earners, they do, because the actual money that's floating around the country starts to dry up. But in the short term they don't affect an inner-suburban white-collar workforce, so they can virtue-signal and feel morally responsible in going forward with a policy that sounds great but doesn't affect them. But, in regional areas, it does affect us; it affects us massively, and it affects blue-collar working areas massively.

When the member for Hunter talks about zero carbon emissions, he has to remember that in his electorate—and I'd say it's probably similar for the member for Paterson and for Labor Party members who want to be members for Central Queensland and North Queensland—that is just a clarion call that you don't want your constituents to have a job, and they're seeing it as such. We're also seeing now that, in the realm of this debate about so-called carbon policy, climate policy and whatever you want to call it—we managed to cure climate change in New England. I know the Deputy Speaker was going through there the other day, and he almost froze to death. Maybe we're doing a good job, because it's been snowing up there. Mind you, I'm waiting for someone to blame snow on climate change as well! It's just a matter of time. What we have to understand is that if we go forward with these policies we are going to be putting people out of work. We should realise this with things like the recent election in Eden-Monaro—Labor with a record low vote, and on our side we didn't win the seat.

This bill should sail right through. It's agreed by the Labor Party, the National Party, the Liberal Party and industry. Basically we're oxygen thieves at the moment by talking about it, but it allows us to touch on some other issues which are just as important, such as water policy, which is vital to the dairy industry. Access to water is crucial whether you're in the north of the nation or in the south of the nation. One of the biggest political issues that we've had, especially in areas within the Murray-Darling Basin, is dairy farmers' capacity to get access to water. If they don't get access to water, we won't have a dairy industry, no matter whether you're exporting it or dealing in the fresh milk market. That's something I think has to be addressed in a real way, in a way that shows real respect for places such as Shepparton, Coburn and Mildura. We have to have a water policy that underpins our agricultural capacity to produce for a domestic market and also allows us to do our very best in an international market.

In closing, I'll say one thing. We've spent an awful lot of money during the COVID crisis. We see our gross debt grow. I think it's $744 billion today, or it was last time I checked on AOFM. I remember, when I was the shadow minister, getting booted from the job because I'd had the gall to say the debt was going to break through $100 billion and that, if we didn't change the trajectory, it'd go through half a trillion. We can leave that behind! It's three-quarters of a trillion now. But we are going to have to have an economy that can actually pay this back, and I haven't heard a plan from anybody for how we pay this money back—not one.

Going back, if you want to hear pseudoprofundity and Latinate mysticism, as I started with, then it's people telling you that they are going to pay back the debt by, I think, 2061. My God! Most of the people in this room will be dead. And between now and then there'll be further depressions and recessions, wars and pandemics. So we've got ourselves into this position whether we like it or not. I said back in 2010 that we wouldn't pay any of the debt back. We haven't. I said the trajectory would continue on. It did. And it's not going to change.

If you did want to pay it back then water policy is not the cure, but it is one of the component parts. We should've been spending the money on major infrastructure items, such as the Bradfield scheme, which moves money not to Lake Eyre but actually into the Murray-Darling Basin to try to secure that water supply for the further development of Queensland and of the western areas of New South Wales, to actually secure water and funds for the dairy industry. If we had done that then we would have created our own Snowy Mountains scheme, which was the economic stimulus after the Second World War. But now it has become more difficult because we are getting further and further into debt. I hope we, the coalition, are maintained as the government, but, if we are not, it's going to be the Labor Party's problem as well, and they go to an election and make a promise without someone asking the obvious question: 'How are you going to pay for that?'

So we have to grow our economy. That works side-by-side with the support of the dairy industry. One of the biggest components of that will be water policy, and one of the vital components of water policy is water infrastructure, which is going to require people to put away their sneering and sniggering and understand that you'll have to get water from where it's in abundance and move it to where there is a paucity of it. We've got rain at the moment, but that will pass and another drought will come. Water's in abundance in the north of our nation and there is a paucity of it in the south of our nation. That is just a historical fact about Australia. If we're going to create a stimulus package then one of the parts of the package that will actually create a legacy and a benefit for Australia in the very, very long term—just like the Snowy Mountains scheme did—would be to get underway the Bradfield scheme.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. I call the honourable member for Gilmore.

Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this dairy amendment legislation, the Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Amendment (Dairy Cattle Export Charge) Bill 2020, today. I really want to thank Joel Fitzgibbon, the shadow minister for agriculture. Joel has been a real advocate in helping dairy farmers. I have many, many dairy farmers in my electorate. Joel has come to my electorate over the last couple of years and he has really taken the time to engage with farmers. I know that farmers have appreciated that as well.

I have the highest concentration of dairy cattle in New South Wales in my electorate. It's a very important statistic, but it's certainly no surprise to me. I was lucky to grow up on a dairy farm, and three of my children work on that dairy farm today. That dairy farm, like many dairy farms in my area, has been there for quite some time.

I think it's important that we go back and look at a little bit of the history, to look at the architecture that was there and what has changed, so that we can look at what we need to do for the future. Back in 1901, I'm very, very proud to say, my great-great-grandfather was the founding chairperson of the Nowra dairy cooperative. That was about local farmers banding together to work out how they could get their milk and their produce to market—for example, via a flying fox over the Shoalhaven River. That was certainly one of the stories that my grandfather told me, and I think that they, like many dairy farmers, loved to travel around the local farms on their roads and have a chat with other farmers. I think that's what our local farmers did particularly well. It's certainly a legacy that is still proudly there today.

We also had, obviously, a lot of cooperatives up and down the coast. Again, these are people that were dairy farmers but they also did a lot of other good things in the community. They probably helped set up many of our community halls that we still see today like my famous Pyree Literary Institute where I know many local farmers met. They discussed how they were going to improve their farms—what they could do. They also discussed local community infrastructure and they certainly discussed local politics, I believe, but they had a real kinship with their local community and with their local schools.

I think it's really important to remember where we've come from, where we are today and where we want to be in the future. I don't want to be a part of a country that has fewer and fewer dairy farmers. We've got the largest fresh milk market in New South Wales in my area. It is a major supplier of local jobs and local spending not just for dairy farms in direct jobs but also in indirect jobs. We're looking at jobs, for example, like fixing trucks and tractors right through to equipment and electricians. There are so many indirect jobs that support our local dairy farmers, and it's absolutely important that we support them.

Obviously, on the New South Wales South Coast we have been absolutely hit, I think, with every disaster that we possibly could have over the last year. We started off with the drought, and that drought was particularly horrific for our local dairy farmers. Even though we are on a river plain, it was just horrific. We had so many dairy cattle that were sold right across the board. It was a very difficult time. But what our dairy farmers do is quite amazing. They are some of the smartest people I know. They have adapted and done every possible thing they could to cut their costs, improve their herd and look after their herd. When I see them I see very progressive people. So I want to take my hat off and thank our local dairy farmers.

As I said, they've been through drought, and I think when I first came to this place we were still in that drought. Then, of course, over the recent summer we've had the horrific bushfires which covered around 80 per cent of my electorate, so they were very, very significant. We've had many, many dairy farmers who literally were fighting off the fires, particularly around the Milton-Ulladulla area, the Nowra area and further south. And for them it was absolutely terrible to be fighting those fires not just once, not just twice but, in some cases, four times. So they've gone from drought and obviously those very dry conditions, fuelling the bushfires.

We had the fires, and then—would you believe it?—we had floods. We had not just one flood but three floods. It's a surreal thing to go from bushfire to flood. Not so long ago I was walking through an area that had been impacted by the fires and it had also been hit by the flood. And you wouldn't wish it on any area. Then recently, in the last couple of weeks, we had another major flood which particularly hit areas right across the electorate again, from Kiama in the north to Nowra along the Shoalhaven River, around the Ulladulla area to Moruya and the Deua. Along the Shoalhaven River we have many dairy farms, and that is the largest flood that we have seen in 30 years. So our farmers have been doing it really, really tough.

And, of course, we've got COVID-19 on top of that. I know all our dairy farmers, when I go and see them, have their COVID signs up to socially distance and do all of that as well. When you take into account the combined effects of drought, bushfires, floods and COVID, they really have had it tough—our dairy farmers and all of our farmers. I think what it's shown is that through those times dairy farmers have had to fight their normal battles but then also other battles—for example, how to get the milk out, how to get the produce out, how to get the fuel tanker in and all those types of things. It's been particularly hard on dairy farmers. When I spoke to one dairy farmer in my region, they said it's very hard, obviously, on their outdoor workers. In many cases, these are areas that people were evacuated from, so to get workers there to be able to milk the cows and things was certainly quite difficult. It's also very hard on the dairy cattle themselves. They get quite stressed. Just going around now looking at the area, which is still quite boggy, you can see calves trying to get out of that to an area a bit higher. But I'm hoping that things are improving there.

I just wanted to mention that since I've been in the parliament one thing that I've found is that you've just got to keep advocating and advocating, and sometimes you don't realise why you should have to do that. But when I came here the farmers in my area, which was in severe drought, couldn't even access drought loans. So that was something that I advocated for so that they could access those drought loans, which seems quite ironic now that we've gone through the bushfires and the floods. Nevertheless, it's an important thing that farmers should be able to get the support they need when they need it.

The other thing, obviously—and Joel spoke about this earlier—is a fairer farmgate milk price. As Joel said, the architecture is there. Farming has changed. I believe farmers now are quite progressive. As I said, they're implementing solar and lots of things to reduce their energy costs. They're doing absolutely everything they can to survive. That benefits, obviously, the farm, the workers in direct jobs and indirect jobs, and the entire community. I think we do still need to look at a fairer farmgate milk price. That's important to my community and my farmers.

Another thing that I advocated for was extending eligibility for the special disaster loans. What happened with this was that, during the drought, some farmers had to go and work off farm to supplement their income, but, when the bushfires came through raging, a lot of them weren't eligible for the special disaster loans because they'd had too much off-farm income, which is kind of ironic because they needed that grant to rebuild the farm infrastructure that had been destroyed by bushfire. I have raised that so many times, and I'm really pleased that the government has finally extended eligibility for the special disaster loans. It means so much to people in my community.

Another thing that I advocated quite strongly for in this parliament and to the National Bushfire Recovery Agency was case managers to help people in our bushfire impacted areas. I've gone out and talked with many famers. These are farmers, in some cases, that were too traumatised to actually leave their farm, or, when they did leave their farm they went for a short time but they couldn't handle it all and went back. They were completely surrounded by the blackened trees from the fires. So I'm really glad that the government has put in case managers. Not so long ago, I was really happy to go to the official opening of the Eurobodalla Bushfire Recovery Support Service in Moruya, which will have nine case managers on hand dealing with around 500 clients impacted by bushfire. They handle all sorts of inquiries, so I really want to thank them. The Eurobodalla council has played a really important part in that as well. I think it goes to the core: we need to advocate for our farmers, and we need to make sure that they're getting the support they need.

I just want to touch on a couple of things. Barnaby raised the issue around cows and methane and polluters, so I couldn't let that go. I am proud to say that in my area, which has the highest concentration of dairy cows, we have a $5 million project to turn manure into electricity at Australia's first biogas plant, so I think that's pretty good. I think that's something that is positive. I think it also signals the fact that we have a lot of farmers there who want to do that. They want to move to renewable energy and they want to reduce emissions. So I don't accept what Barnaby said. It's not that hard. We can and should be moving to zero net emissions by 2050 and we should be doing everything we can to do that. Our farmers are implementing many practices. We have a regional effluent management system in the Shoalhaven, which we have had for a very long time, that recycles water. A very successful Shoalhaven City Council project has just been expanded. So there are certainly things that we can do. During the recent floods, in the Tallowa Dam we lost—would you believe—20 years of water. It went over the dam because of the flood. That is not on. We had a lot of water, obviously, but we need to learn how to capture more of that water.

Moving forward, we absolutely need a plan for the dairy industry. I sit on the House of Representatives Agriculture and Water Resources Committee and I listen to the excellent submissions from people from all different types of agriculture. I'm aghast that we don't have a national plan. We absolutely do need one. I think we need to look more at the impacts of drought, bushfire and flood. We certainly do have a changing climate, and I think you've only got to look at the New South Wales South Coast to see that. We absolutely need to do more about disaster preparedness as part of a plan to address drought, bushfires, floods and any sort of virus, as well. We need to attack that.

We also really need to listen to our dairy farmers. They're great advocates themselves, but we need to make sure that we're listening to them. Also, there is the issue of attracting more young people into the agriculture industry. In my local area, we have a great local Young Dairy Network, but they only receive $20,000 a year and it covers a really big area. We should be investing more in our young people. We have a really promising area on the New South Wales South Coast for the fresh milk market, for dairying and for lots of different agriculture. It's very promising. We just need the government to get on board with a plan to support our local farmers.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few comments about this very important bill, the Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Amendment (Dairy Cattle Export Charge) Bill 2020. It raises lots of questions about the dairy industry. As I have a lot of dairy farmers in my electorate of Lyne, and in the adjacent electorates, I have a deep appreciation of the challenges in the dairy industry. This bill is about the export charges for dairy cattle that are exported to Asia, in most instances, which is a reflection of a very sorry period in the Australian dairy industry on the east coast. There have been instances where fertile valleys on the east coast have literally had their fresh water dry up, such that water was trucked into farms. There are several rivers in the Lyne electorate that have had that problem. In the Gloucester Valley we had similar problems, with two of the three water sources pretty much drying up, such was the severity of the drought. Compounding this were pressures on the dairy farmers themselves, with unsustainable prices. We have been moving comprehensively to change the way milk is marketed and to introduce the dairy code of conduct—we made it mandatory, as a mandatory specified code under the Competition and Consumer Act. But I am hearing feedback that even though these mandatory codes were being put in, establishing the right to sell to multiple partners, to multiple clients, to retain ownership beyond the farm gate, there is still resistance from some entities, including a well-known cooperative on the North Coast of New South Wales.

Burying people in detail is not going to help anyone. Suffice to say that we hope the trading opportunities from the mandatory code of conduct will reduce the risk for both processors and farmers. At the moment, contracting is done, in most instances, over long-term contracts. Where processors have to take a punt on a price, people will contract with them. But, if they give too much, they might end up like Murray Goulburn and price themselves into a permanent loss situation. Being able to trade your milk and hedge your risk with multiple contracts to multiple buyers over varying times will allow both the producer and the processor to manage their risk.

I don't understand why all the processors aren't running as quickly as possible to embrace those changes. Also, the body of work is being done to set up the Australian milk pricing initiative that Minister Littleproud announced. There are areas where trading of milk happens in shorter contracts, but we want this to be accessed by all farmers, not just processors on a small scale. It will improve the profitability because it will allow both the farmer and the processor to manage risk. They can ride the highs and lock in a margin. It is a commodity that fluctuates in price; people can know to invest to expand or to shrink.

The tragedy that comes to light in our discussions on this bill is that, over the last three years, there's been an explosion in the export of our dairy herd. A lot of it went as live cattle to set up dairy herds in China, and a lot of it went to other Asian countries, because male dairy cows are a really good protein source. It just reflects the shrinking of our industry.

The member for New England, who spoke previously, mentioned the criticality of water. In Victoria, down in the Murray, the price of water got so high that farmers were not able to turn a dollar. They were losing money hand over fist. That's where a lot of these export cattle have come from, as well as in my area. We need further reform in this sector. Other industries have mandatory codes of conduct for how product is purchased and traded between primary producers, retailers and processors. That would be a great initiative to have in the dairy industry—a mandatory code of conduct in the food and grocery code.

The other thing is that competition reform remains a policy of the National Party, of which I'm a proud member. We think that competition reform and having a divestment power for all retail, not just in the dairy industry but in all retail and goods, would be a really good thing for this nation. This bill makes amendments so that the Livestock Exporters' Council voluntary code is made mandatory. It makes the research and development in live cattle export much more viable. That's the genesis of this. No-one likes levies, but, if we want this industry to get the best value for its product, a bit of research and marketing will help.

I would like to remind everyone that, for the dairy industry, the rain has come. Things are more profitable, but we need reform so that, for the long term, we have a much more viable industry that can manage risk. The methane issue is real. The biodigester was a project that I promoted up and down the corridors of this building. It is a great project. The potential to capture methane, turn it into fertiliser, clear water and get rid of the smell is a win for everyone. Many more dairy farmers could partake in that. Also, clever farming and cropping can capture methane, as long as you have modern farming techniques. It's not all bad. Methane is a problem for some, but I think a zero emissions target is unrealistic. I commend this bill to the House.

Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Amendment (Dairy Cattle Export Charge) Bill 2020 amends the Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Act 1999 to provide for export charges to be imposed on dairy cattle and set the rate of provision on a per head basis on the export of dairy cattle. The bill will enable the full funding of research and development and marketing activities specific to the dairy cattle export sector through the Dairy Cattle Export Program.

The dairy cattle export charge was requested by industry to replace the existing voluntary charge that is undercollected, and it will have no negative impacts on the dairy cattle export sector. Extensive stakeholder consultation on the statutory dairy cattle export charge was undertaken. The majority of registered Australian government licensed livestock exporters voted in support of the charge, and no objections were received during the six-week public objection period.

The bill will provide for sustainable funding to assist with ongoing improvements to animal health and welfare, including education and training of trading partners on animal welfare matters, and regulatory performance and market access for the dairy cattle export sector. If the bill is not passed, the Dairy Cattle Export Program will continue to be significantly underfunded in its administration of programs that enhance the productivity, sustainability and competitiveness of Australia's dairy cattle export sector, worth an estimated $200 million.

This bill will ensure Australian dairy cattle exporters are provided with funding for R&D and marketing that supports them in continuing to supply high-quality dairy cattle to international markets. I commend the bill to the House.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Hunter has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Question agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.